Stefania+Kwit

On April 3, 1928, 30-year-old homemaker Stefania Geleezny Kwit, a native of Poland, died from complications of a criminal abortion performed that day by 45-year-old midwife Pauline Majerczyk. On May 3, Mauerczyk was held by the coroner for murder by abortion, and indicted for felony murder on May 15.

Evidently she remained free, because she is still listed as a midwife living in Chicago in the 1930 Federal census. She would have blended in well in Chicago, where midwife-abortionists were common in that era.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see [|Abortion in the 1920s].

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion] Source:


 * [|Homicide in Chicago Interactive]

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